A tire tread has to meet, in a known way, a large number of often conflicting technical requirements, including a low rolling resistance, a high wear resistance and a high wet grip.
It has been possible to improve this compromise in properties, in particular from the viewpoint of the rolling resistance and the wear resistance, in recent years with regard to energy-saving “Green Tires”, intended in particular for passenger vehicles, by virtue in particular of the use of novel weakly hysteretic rubber compositions having the characteristic of being reinforced predominantly by specific inorganic fillers described as reinforcing, in particular by highly dispersible silicas (HDS), capable of rivalling, from the viewpoint of the reinforcing power, conventional tire-grade carbon blacks.
However, the improvement in the wet grip properties of tires remains a continual preoccupation of tire designers.